


theirs is an n-body problem

by taq



Category: The Half of It (2020)
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23981176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taq/pseuds/taq
Summary: take a system of point masses and solve for their subsequent motion given their initial position and velocity.---Life moves along for Ellie and Aster. Paul helps.
Relationships: Ellie Chu & Aster Flores, Ellie Chu & Paul Munsky, Ellie Chu/Aster Flores
Comments: 24
Kudos: 250





	theirs is an n-body problem

She doesn’t text until she’s settled into her room. 

Pa wanted her to bring the rice cooker - it cooks everything! - but she’s so glad she didn’t because there really isn’t space for it and he’s the one who needs it more.

She doesn’t text until all her clothes are hung up in the closet and the sheets stretched out on her new mattress and her shoes tucked under her bed (which is still kind of weird but she knows that’s how everyone else does it even though this is her space now).

* * *

_Weird?_

_Like it’s not me._

_But it is you._

_It seems like it could almost not be real, not be me. Like it’s still Squahamish, but not._

_A reality to be experienced, not a problem to be solved._

_Life. Kierkegaard. Now who’s plagiarizing?_

* * *

She doesn’t have a plan. 

Well, try classes and see what clicks isn’t much of a plan but she shuffles into the back of a tutorial and flips through the reading material and then someone else in the room raises their hand to speak and Ellie, well, Ellie guesses she’ll make dumplings for Ms G with Paul’s new sausage recipe when she goes back over Thanksgiving.

She might owe her one.

* * *

_Life is absurd._

_Because your meal card ran out of points before dinner?_

* * *

She knows that she’s always known that Squahamish was small. And different. Sacramento was lights and big malls and the Golden Gate Bridge an hour and a half away and the world just right there and Squahamish is, well, not.

She’s done a really good job all this while not-thinking about the art theaters in Berkeley, the galleries, the mexican food, but one foot onto campus just blows that all away.

There’s a vibrancy and a buzz, an energy and a life that just washes across the brick and the concrete and Aster realizes her hands are shaking when she puts pencil to paper for the first time.

* * *

_Good night._

_To you. I greet the final 20 pages of my reading with a leftover caffeine buzz from dinner._

_The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones._

_I suppose 20 pages would be two small stones._

* * *

The world is big.

Which Ellie’s always known. And she’s not really the type to wax lyrical over the quality of her classmates but it’s fun to sharpen her swords on the whetstone of wit, to give as good as she gets, to realize she’s wrong and be so thoroughly convinced that it leaves only stunned kind of resignation that doesn’t sit in her bones but rises up, bubbling through her blood.

College is fun.

Being around people who get her is really, really fun.

* * *

_Term papers. And a presentation. And they call it a two credit class._

_We measure credits in the inverse of daylight hours we claim back from the studio._

_Sounds great._

_You sound ilke you’re having a good time too._

* * *

In a way, it’s kind of nice to just be judged by her art.

They poke and prod at it til it is more holes than material, question the choices, make her question her choices, keep an unblinking eye pressed to her canvases, don’t notice the curls escaping from her ponytail or the smudges of crimson on her overalls.

Aster has never felt quite so seen and it fills her with a quiet sort of uplifting buoyancy.

That crashes pretty quickly when she realizes the next piece is to be sculpture but the momentum converts itself into energy and the days blur into one.

There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one, she thinks as she lies just barely awake, as her mind swims off to the smell of oil paint.

The Ishiguro quote doesn’t quite make it to her phone.

* * *

Ellie sees a text but she’s already running late and yes Grinnell isn’t the biggest of colleges but sometimes it really isn’t enough time to scramble from the studio to the tutorial in 10 minutes.

So she leaves the notification there, unread, and it isn’t til dinner that she sees it again.

* * *

Aster’s phone dings while she’s halfway through a petal on a sunflower and the sound registers but she’s in a groove now and it can wait. They’ll call if it’s urgent.

* * *

_This morning thing comes a little too quickly._

_Gotta run, sorry. Catch you later._

* * *

It’s a text from Paul that reminds her.

 _Hey u back for Thanksgiving?_ 😉 _Your dad says hi_

_Yeah._

_C u at 9:40 then_ 😁😁😁😁

_Oh you don’t have to come to the station._

🚂 _It’s k. C u!_ 🚗

Ellie sits back, runs her hair through her bangs (a spur of the moment decision and she can’t say she regrets it), wonders if she’ll see Aster.

Oh.

Crud.

Her fingers shake. She doesn’t remember if she replied the last text. She doesn’t remember when the last text was, if there is a last text to reply to.

She scrolls through the ‘where are you, saved you a seat’ messages, skips the ‘dude Prof D said the homework’s due tomorrow’ set and taps on the October 8th message.

_Gotta run, sorry. Catch you later._

She doesn’t know what to say to that.

* * *

Pa listens to her try to explain how the classes go, a glint in his eyes when she mentions trying computer science though it fades into a twitch of amusement when she goes into the hour she spent fixing a god-forsaken semi-colon. Really now. Of all the ridiculous things.

He chuckles at her scathing review of the dining hall rice, gives her the ‘I-told-you-so’ look but just keeps pressing dumplings onto her plate.

She slaps Paul’s hands when he reaches over to steal one.

“You’re not gonna finish that many,” he pouts.

“They’re mine,” Ellie says.

Pa just pours her some more tea.

* * *

She is sitting up on her bed, looking down at her guitar. She hadn’t brought it to college with her - would have been a pain to wrestle on and off the train with all her other belongings and well, she hadn’t had the time to quite miss it.

Fingers pull at the strings and the jolt of music takes her back to the church and-

And she scrambles down the ladder to the kitchen. Gonna get something to drink from the fridge. Paul better not have finished all the Yakult she brought back from Iowa (of all places).

She’s sitting in her chair in front of the blank telly screen when Pa comes in from the late weeknight train.

“Ellie,” he says finally in his pressed shirt and vest, “you looked happy.”

She swallows.

* * *

_Is this later?_

She doesn’t send it, locks the screen, throws the phone to a side and rolls over. Sleep doesn’t come quite so easily but it does, eventually, just as the sky starts turning the dullest shade of blue-grey.

* * *

It is Paul who leans over her and presses the send button without even reading it and Ellie is equally parts horrified and mortified at his grinning face.

“You’re thinking so loud I can hear it,” he passes her a sausage, “now try this one. Your dad likes it and Aster said it was good but I want to know what you think.”

Her heart pounds in her chest.

* * *

Theirs might be a changing, moving mess but she looks up from the grass and Aster is there, smile in her eyes, a loose tendril of hair floating across her face, and Ellie knows that there might be no closed-form solution.

But that this might just be love.

* * *

_Yes._


End file.
